Street Food - Jerusalem

It is a city torn by politics and war, but whatever a citizens' race or religion, much of their customary street food is the same. Street Food asks what this says about a shared identity and how much hope it offers for the future?

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Al Jazeera\English

To Provoke War: Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians & Shoot At Them

Sy Hersh at Campus Progress journalism conference






faizshakir

Dandelion Salad

Think progress

Labour MPs want 'lost' PM Gordon Brown to go soon

Labour backbenchers broke ranks yesterday to call on Gordon Brown to quit - with Gordon Prentice saying it was time for the party to realise giving him the top job was a mistake.

The MP for Pendle, Lancs, declared: "A PM needs a different set of skills from a Chancellor. He must be able to communicate, per-suade and enthuse. If not, the message is lost. I hope Gordon reflects on things in August and accepts it is in the party's best interests, and perhaps his own, to stand down."

Merseyside MP George Howarth added: "We are in a perilous situation and need to think how we got into it and how we can get out of it.

"And as part of that process the PM's role has to be up for discussion."

But female Cabinet ministers rallied around Mr Brown, with deputy Leader Harriet Harman telling GMTV he is "the solution, not the problem".

29.07.2008 . Mirror.co.uk

Le Pen - The Strasbourg speech about Europe (July, 10. 2008)

10 July 2008 : Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, the leading French nationalist Party, addresses the European Parliament in Strasbourg and denounces the European policy of President Sarkozy.
Translated and subtitled by

http://fdesouche.com

THE EMPIRE OF "THE CITY" (World Superstate)

City of London + City of Vatican + City of columbia are the 3 independent states within states which composes the empire of the city. The first is financial control over earth economy, the second is religion control over the earth and the third one is military control over the earth. Together they make the very unholy trinity which forms the Egyptian pyramid that we can see on the back of the privately owned federal reserve note that is used as American dollar to maintain the colony in debt and under the Queen. Many people realize that this mystifying situation, in which an alleged democratic and self-governing nation is actually controlled against the will of the people, is a clear indication that there must be a very powerful and well-financed occult organization which plans and directs world affairs, and for lack of a more specific identification the suspected secret organization is popularly referred to as the International Financiers, Banksters cartel or "The Crown corporation".

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VOCES INOCENTES

Last night on TV I watched this Film, for some reason the Italian station changed the name of the film to "Figli della guerra". The film is about the war in El Salvador and the impact it has on the kids.

After watching the film I looked on Google for the real name of the film and tried to find more information about it since it is a Biography and found some really interesting information.

The film, set in El Salvador during the years of civil war in the ‘80s, is told through the voice and eyes of 11-year old Chava. He lives with his mother, two brothers and a sister in a cardboard-house in a village, and at age 12 will be ‘eligible’ to be taken into the “ejercito” (army). He tries to avoid it so that he can have a “normal” childhood. Winner of many awards.

Voces inocentes (English title: Innocent Voices) is a 2004 Mexican film directed by Luis Mandoki. The plot is set during the Salvadoran Civil War in 1980s, and is based on writer Oscar Torres's childhood. The film serves as a general commentary on the military use of children. The movie also shows injustice against innocent people who are forced to fight in the war. It follows the story of the narrator, a boy named Chava.

Here is the official website on which you can watch the trailer.

And this is the best part that I found on youtube.



At the moment I`mtrying to find a version of the film with English Subtitles

MUSIC VIDEO TRIBUTE Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Israel "Iz" Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole (May 20, 1959 -- June 26, 1997) (pronounced [ka-maka-vi-vo-ole]) was an Hawaiian musician.

He became famous outside Hawaii when his album Facing Future was released in 1993 with his medley of "Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World", which was subsequently featured in several films, television programs, and commercials.

From childhood, his family called Israel by his Hawaiian middle name, Kaʻanoʻi, the "beloved one". His name would later become the title name of his first solo album, Kaʻanoʻi, and also foretells the greatness of this "cherished one". It is interesting to note here that part of his name, anoʻi, when simplified to noʻi may be a contraction of the Hawaiian word, nohi. Nohi means "bright-colored, vivid, as the rainbow" (see Hawaiian Dictionary, Pukui and Elbert). Nohi, rainbow, beloved one, and cherished one are powerful symbols in his life. Iz's recording of the song "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" would become renowned throughout the world and continues to garner high acclaim. The song has come to be known as Izʻs "signature song", the most renowned of all his songs.

Kamakawiwo`ole was nicknamed "The Gentle Giant" by his admirers. He was described as always cheerful and positive, and he was best known for his love of the land and of the people of Hawaiʻi. Through his consummate ukulele playing and incorporation of other idioms (such as jazz and reggae), Iz remains one of the major influences in Hawaiian music over the last 15 years.

Israel's recording of "Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" reached #12 on Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart the week of 1/31/04 (for the survey week ending 1/18/04), possibly due to its use in the Adam Sandler film 50 First Dates, and the Brad Pitt film Meet Joe Black.

In 2006, a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", in an arrangement based on Iz', was performed by The Worthless Peons in "My Way Home", the 100th episode of Scrubs, over the closing montage. A recording of the same song by Iz was used in the closing scenes of the final episode of Life on Mars (TV Series). It is also a featured song in the movie Finding Forrester. In 2002, the song was used to powerful effect in the closing scenes of Anthony Edwards' last appearance in ER as Dr. Mark Greene, in the episode "On the Beach". On week 8 of American Idol (season 7), Jason Castro performed his own version of this song except that he left out the "What a Wonderful World" line, but still gave credit to Israel for the song.

DEATH:
Throughout the later part of his life, Iz was obese and at one point carried 758 pounds (344 kg) on his 6 feet 2 inches (1.9 m) frame. He endured several hospitalizations and died of weight-related respiratory illness on June 26, 1997 at 12:18 am at the age of 38.

The Hawaiʻi State Flag flew at half-staff on July 10, 1997, the day of Iz's funeral. His koa wood coffin lay in state at the Capitol building in Honolulu. He was the third person in Hawaiian history to be accorded this honor (the other two were Governor John A. Burns and Senator Spark Matsunaga) and the only non-politician. Over 10,000 people attended his funeral. Thousands of fans gathered and cheered as his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean at Mākua Beach on July 12, 1997.

On September 20, 2003, hundreds paid tribute to Iz as a 200-pound bronze bust of the revered singer was unveiled at the Waianae Neighborhood Community Center on O'ahu. The singer's widow, Marlene Kamakawiwo'ole, and sculptor Jan-Michelle Sawyer were present for the dedication ceremony.

I would like to dedicate this blog to my friend Lino who died last Saturday at the age of 55

The picture that shames Italy

By Peter Popham in Rome
Tuesday, 22 July 2008

It's another balmy weekend on the beach in Naples. By the rocks, a couple soak up the southern Italian sun. A few metres away, their feet poking from under beach towels that cover their faces and bodies, lie two drowned Roma children.

The girls, Cristina, aged 16, and Violetta, 14, were buried last night as the fallout from the circumstances of their death reverberated throughout Italy.

It is an image that has crystallised the mounting disquiet in the country over the treatment of Roma, coming after camps have been burnt and the government has embarked on a bid to fingerprint every member of the minority. Two young Roma sisters had drowned at Torregaveta beach after taking a dip in treacherous waters. Their corpses were recovered from the sea – then left on the beach for hours while holidaymakers continued to sunbathe and picnic around them.

They had come to the beach on the outskirts of Naples on Saturday with another sister, Diana, nine, and a 16-year-old cousin, Manuela, to make a little money selling coloured magnets and other trinkets to sunbathers. But it was fiercely hot all day and, about 2pm, the girls surrendered to the temptation of a cooling dip – even though they apparently did not know how to swim.

"The sea was rough on Saturday," said Enzo Esposito, the national treasurer of Opera Nomadi, Italy's biggest Roma organisation. "Christina and Violetta went farther out than the other two, and a big wave came out of nowhere and dashed them on to the rocks. For a few moments, they disappeared; Manuela, who was in shallow water with Diana, came to the shore, helped out by people on the beach, and ran to try and get help."

Other reports said that lifeguards from nearby private beaches also tried to help, without success. "When Manuela and Diana came back," Esposito went on, "the bodies of her cousins had reappeared, and they were already dead."

It was the sort of tragedy that could happen on any beach. But what happened next has stunned Italy. The bodies of the two girls were laid on the sand; their sister and cousin were taken away by the police to identify and contact the parents. Some pious soul donated a couple of towels to preserve the most basic decencies. Then beach life resumed.

The indifference was taken as shocking proof that many Italians no longer have human feelings for the Roma, even though the communities have lived side by side for generations.

"This was the other terrible thing," says Mr Esposito, "besides the fact of the girls drowning: the normality. The way people continued to sunbathe, for three hours, just metres away from the bodies. They could have gone to a different beach. It's not possible that you can watch two young people die then carry on as if nothing happened. It showed a terrible lack of sensitivity and respect."

The attitudes of ordinary Italians towards the Roma, never warm, have been chilling for years, aggravated by sensational news coverage of crimes allegedly committed by Gypsies, and a widespread confusion of Roma with ordinary, non-Roma Romanians, who continue to arrive. The Berlusconi government has launched a high-profile campaign against the community, spearheaded by the programme announced by the Interior Minister, Roberto Marroni, to fingerprint the entire Roma population. The move has been condemned inside Italy and beyond as a return to the racial registers introduced by the Fascist regime in the 1930s. The fingerprinting of Roma in Naples began on 19 June.

The most senior Catholic in Naples, Cardinal Crescenzo Sepe, was quick to point out the coarsening of human sentiment which the behaviour on the beach represented. But the Mayor of Monte di Procida, the town on the outskirts of the city where Torregaveta beach is located, defended his citizens' behaviour.

When the Roma girls got into difficulties, he said: "There was a race among the bathers and the coastguard and the carabinieri to try and help them." He rejected the claim that the indifference of the bathers was due to the fact that the girls were Roma.

The two cousins were given a Christian Orthodox funeral service in the Roma camp in Naples, attended by 300 Roma and city and regional representatives.

In a speech yesterday, Mr Maroni proposed, "for humanitarian reasons", granting Italian citizenship to all Roma children in Italy abandoned by their parents.

The Italians and the Roma

Roma have been living in Italy for seven centuries and the country is home to about 150,000, who live mainly in squalid conditions in one of around 700 encampments on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. But their poverty and resistance to integration have made them far more conspicuous than other communities. And the influx of thousands more migrants from Romania in the past year has confirmed the view of many Italians that the Gypsies and their eyesore camps are the source of all their problems. The ethnic group is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries. According to a recent newspaper survey, more than two thirds of Italians want Gypsies expelled, whether they hold Italian passports or not.

The Independent

Myanmar hints at Suu Kyi release

The Myanmar ruling military has hinted that it might release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in six months time. But critics argue the words are just empty rhetoric.

Al Jazeera's Hannah Belcher reports.

MAD WORLD

Gary Jules Lyrics
Mad World Lyrics

NOW THAT THE STRIKE IS OVER

Now that from today the public transport is back in service let`s analyze what had caused all that happened.

First of all no Government should make promises that he knows he cant keep and the one with the transport authorities was not the only one.

Before the Election Letters like the one sent by the ex minister Jesmond Mugliette where sent from basically every department to all kinds of people with all kinds of promises.

It was only days after the election that young couples found out that the "Equity Sharing scheme" in which new couples could have saved thousands of Euros when buying a new apartment was stopped, the next thing was He did not want to negotiate with the University staff about there agreement ( And they ended up with industrial action as well) .

On another note he said that he will fix things up at MEPA ( Malta Environment Planning Authority) just a few days ago they issued a press release about the permits for Fort Cambridge before that the same MEPA held a public meeting to hear what the area residents had to say.

Now just last week we had Mr John Dalli saying that "Mater Dei" the Hospital that took 17 years to be built and is supposed to be a "state of the Art" kind of hospital is only a part time hospital and that the waiting lists are unacceptable, in the mean time these waiting lists keeps growing.

Now that the Opposition party have a new Leader and by next week will have all the people that are taking other places in the party hopefully it will move in some direction because till know it had not done much, One thing I would like to know from the Labour Party is the real reason why it had agreed with the Lisbon treaty, A treaty that everybody knows is not much more than the EU constitution under a different name the same constitution that was rejected where it was put to a referendum.

Malteseken ,Friday July 18 ,2008

Back to work

Malta Bus Drivers

Hi everyone,

What we Maltese people had to witness today is something that should not happen in this day and age, Everybody should have a right to Strike but nobody have the right to stop other people from doing their Job, nobody have the right to block the roads and nobody should consider himself above the law.

On these video`s you can see some of the inconvenience that has been caused to day all over Malta .



Bus Drivers, Taxi drivers, Mini bus drivers trying to go in the Prime Minister`s office.



Buses , white Taxis and Mini Buses Blocking the Roads going in and out of Valletta



Bus drivers stopping a private Coach full of tourists from entering Valletta.

Some private coaches has had their windscreens broken and other mini buses had been attacked as well. These actions should be condemned and whoever took part should be prosecuted. Every body knows that bus drivers in Malta along with Taxi drivers hardly have any manners and that all efforts done by authorities to upgrade the service giver have4 resulted in nothing.I think it`s about time that these people have to be stopped. You cant have a public service run by a bunch of people with manners that you only can compare them with old time Pirates.

Inakadate Rice Fields

Yesterday a friend of mine EMDexreme on the Virgin Radio Community where apart from listening to good music you can create your own blog as well shared with us some really nice pictures of the rice fields in Inakadate so I decided to do some more research about this.



To tell you the truth this was something that I never heard about, that`s why I decided to do a little bit of searching and to share it over here, While doing my search I found a blog called Life in Inakadate which have more information on many other aspects about the culture and the people of Inakadate.

Another good article that I found is called Homegrown art on The Japan Times by Yoko Hani a journalist that writes a lot about agriculture among other articles which you can find here on this link.

EARTHLINGS

EARTHLINGS is a feature length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete disrespect for these so-called "non-human providers." The film is narrated by Academy Award nominee Joaquin Phoenix (GLADIATOR) and features music by the critically acclaimed platinum artist Moby. With an in-depth study into pet stores, puppy mills and animals shelters, as well as factory farms, the leather and fur trades, sports and entertainment industries, and finally the medical and scientific profession, EARTHLINGS uses hidden cameras and never before seen footage to chronicle the day-to-day practices of some of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. Powerful, informative and thought-provoking, EARTHLINGS is by far the most comprehensive documentary ever produced on the correlation between nature, animals, and human economic interests. There are many worthy animal rights films available, but this one transcends the setting. EARTHLINGS cries to be seen. Highly recommended! Other languages and download at: http://veg-tv.info/Earthlings



Earthlings official website

Exclusive: secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election

A film that graphically shows how Robert Mugabe's supporters rigged Zimbabwe's election has been smuggled out of the country by a prison officer. It is believed to be the first footage of actual ballot-rigging and comes as Zimbabwe's president faces growing international pressure.

Shepherd Yuda, 36, fled the country this week with his wife and children. He said that he hoped the film, which was made for the Guardian, would help draw further attention to the violence and corruption in Zimbabwe.

Much of the footage was shot inside the country's notorious jail system. Yuda, who has worked in the prison service for 13 years, was motivated by the intensifying violence directed towards the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the murder, two months ago, of his uncle, a MDC activist.

Initially he intended to chronicle secretly what life was like inside Zimbabwe's jails but he found himself present when a war veteran and Mugabe supporter organised the vote-rigging by getting prison officers to fill in their postal ballots in his presence.

Using a hidden camera, Yuda filmed for six days prior to last Friday's run-off election in which Mugabe claimed victory with 90% of the vote. Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, had earlier said his party would not be participating in the run-off because of intimidation.

"I had never seen that kind of violence before," said Yuda, of the run-up to the election. "How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people?"

The film, made for Guardian Films, shows how Yuda and his colleagues at Harare central jail had to fill in their ballots in front of Zanu-PF activists.

Yuda also obtained footage of Zanu-PF rallies where voters were told they should pretend to be illiterate so that an official could fill in their ballot for them on behalf of Mugabe.

He was able to film the MDC's general secretary, Tendai Biti, in leg irons in jail. Biti, now on bail, faces treason charges which carry the death penalty.

Having completed filming, Yuda left Zimbabwe with his family for a new life and is now at a secret destination.

"I don't regret doing this, although it is a painful decision I have taken," he said. "We can live without the memories of seeing dead bodies in the prison, dead bodies in the street, dead bodies in my family.

"I've lost my uncle. My father was also beaten by Zanu-PF. I am praying to God: please God deal with Zanu-PF ruthlessly."

Mugabe has now been sworn in for a sixth term as Zimbabwe's president, a process which Tsvangirai described as "a complete joke". More than 130,000 voters spoiled their ballot papers in the election.

International pressure is mounting against Mugabe. It emerged yesterday that a US draft resolution to the UN will call for sanctions against Mugabe and demand that his government immediately begin talks with the MDC.

If adopted by the Security Council, the resolution would freeze the financial assets of Mugabe and 11 other Zimbabwean officials and ban them from travelling.

Duncan Campbell and Paul Lewis

The Guardian, Saturday July 5 2008

Woman left to die on hospital floor

After the good news of yesterday about Ingrid Betancourt release today I decided to check Sitemeter and I found out that my blog has been visited by the (IOWA HEALTH SYSTEM) because of a blog that I did about how the people that wanted to return home after the flooding where treated by the so called strike teams.

What irritated me today is that the Health system in the states can find people to can spend the whole day looking at blogs but cant find decent people to employ in their own hospitals.


A women was left to die in the Hospital waiting room with nobody doing nothing for more than an hour after that she fell from the chair she was sitting on.



A shocking video shows a woman dying on the floor in the psych ward at Kings County Hospital, while people around her, including a security guard, did nothing to help.

After an hour, another mental patient finally got the attention of the indifferent hospital workers, according to the tape, obtained by the Daily News.

Worse still, the surveillance tape suggests hospital staff may have falsified medical charts to cover the utter lack of treatment provided Esmin Green before she died.

"Thank God for the videotape because no one would have believed this could have happened," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"There's a clear possibility of criminal wrongdoing with regard to recordkeeping, and that has to be investigated."

The city Department of Investigation is part of a sweeping probe that has brought some changes to the ward known as G Building.

A federal suit filed last year in Brooklyn alleged neglect and abuse of mental patients at the hospital. The suit sparked an investigation by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney's civil rights unit before the June 19 death.

Two different security guards spotted Green, a native of the island of Jamaica, prone on the floor and did nothing, the tape shows. They have been fired, along with four other staffers.

Green, 49, taken to the unit for "agitation," keels over out of her chair at 5:32a.m., according to the time stamp on the video. She had been sitting about 3feet from an observation window. Two other patients were in the room.

Green is lying facedown on the floor, her legs splayed, when a security guard strolls by at 5:53 a.m., looks at her for about 20 seconds and then walks away.

She is writhing on the floor, thrashing her legs, about 6 a.m., when her medical chart contends she was "awake, up and about, went to the bathroom."

Green rolls on her back at 6:04a.m. She stops moving at 6:08 a.m., but two minutes later a security guard pushed his chair into camera view.

He never gets out of the chair, but looks at Green and scoots away. A female patient who was in and out of the room finally brings a clinic staffer to check the woman and a crash cart is summoned.

The medical chart claims she was "sitting quietly in [the] waiting room" at 6:20 a.m., although she was already dead. The cause of death is still under investigation.

"We are shocked and distressed by this situation," the Health and Hospitals Corp. said in a statement.

BY JOHN MARZULLI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

read more on Metro news uk

FREE AT LAST

Today like everybody else I was very happy to hear about the release of Ingrid Betancourt. Since I found the Flash news on BBC rss feed I first started checking other news sites just to check if it`s true. Then started checking all the TV news channel and on one of them there was a conference from her sister Astrid and her two children Lorenzo and Melanie.

Just now on Al Jazeera English they are showing, Ingrid Betancourt and the other 14 hostages that where released, She looks a lot better than the last video that was released and she thanked one of the other hostages wich she said was her doctor in the jungle where they where being held captive for the last six years.

While checking for any videos on youtube for the latest events I didn`t find any, but there was this video wich is (Hommage à Ingrid bétancourt et à toutes les femmes otages dans le monde) dedicated to Betancourt and all the other women held captive in the world.

THE GIRL WHO SILENCED THE WORLD FOR 5 MINUTES

Raised in Vancouver and Toronto, Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been camping and hiking all her life. When she was 9 she started the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a small group of children committed to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. They were successful in many projects before 1992, when they raised enough money to go to the UN's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Their aim was to remind the decision-makers of who their actions or inactions would ultimately affect. The goal was reached when 12 yr old Severn closed a Plenary Session with a powerful speech that received a standing ovation.

Mercosur anger at EU migrant laws

Leaders attending an Argentine summit of South American trade bloc Mercosur are expected to strongly criticise new European Union immigration laws.

A directive passed by the EU last month could see illegal immigrants detained for up to 18 months and if expelled they face a five-year ban on re-entry.

There are hundreds of thousands of South Americans working in EU countries, many of them illegally.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has called the EU measures "shameful".

The Bolivian leader, Evo Morales, said they did nothing to combat discrimination and racism, while Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said the region did not accept the concept of migration as a crime.

South American leaders often find it difficult to reach agreement on many things but they appear to be united in their anger at the new EU immigration rules, reports the BBC's Daniel Schweimler from Argentina.

Most of South America's leaders are in the Argentine city of Tucuman where their summit plans to issue a declaration condemning the EU measures.

The European Union last month adopted the rules, which could come into force in 2010.

The law will oblige EU members to choose between issuing residency permits to the estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants who enter each year, or returning them to their country of origin.

Under the new rules, an illegal immigrant can be detained for a maximum of six months. This period is extendable by a further 12 months under certain conditions if, for example, the immigrant fails to co-operate with the authorities.

The rules allow for a 30-day voluntary departure period for illegal immigrants before their expulsion.

Once expelled, they may be barred from re-entering the EU for a five-year period.

Food shortages

On other issues, Mercosur says it is taking a big step towards regional integration by lifting visa restrictions, which will allow South Americans to travel freely between member and associate countries showing only their ID cards.

Other topics being addressed at the meeting which began on Monday and runs until Tuesday are regional and international food crises and on this there is no unity, our correspondent says.

The summit host, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who has been facing farmers' strikes over her proposals to raise tariffs on food exports, blamed poor wealth distribution for food shortages.

"The chief cause of the world food shortage is poorly distributed wealth by oligopolies and financial institutions and lack of market access," she said on Sunday.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is against tariffs, argues that producing more food would solve the crisis.

"The more (food) we produce, the more food security we'll have. With fair prices you can increase exports," he said.

BBC NEWS